


Legacy of Oblivion

by BloodRaevynn



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Family, Gen, Is it still MPreg if he was technically female at the time?, Past-Life Trauma, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-17
Updated: 2012-04-17
Packaged: 2017-11-03 19:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodRaevynn/pseuds/BloodRaevynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A child is a vulnerability; too deeply loved and too easily exploited.  She is a danger to him, he is a danger to her, and no good will ever come of it.  He has such perfect understanding of the agony of losing a child, despite never having suffered such a tragedy, that it can only be a premonition.</p><p>For an anonymous NorseKink prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legacy of Oblivion

**Author's Note:**

> Original Prompt: http://norsekink.livejournal.com/6420.html?thread=12918548#t12918548

    Loki awakens, back and neck stiff from sleeping in the chair by the crib, exhausted from months of too little sleep, dizzy and sweating from the fever. She's crying again. Again!  
    "Can you not sleep for even a few more hours?" Loki half-sobs. "Wretched creature."  
    He forces himself to his feet, head spinning, his limbs shaking so much he doesn't want to pick her up for fear he will drop her. He manages though to carry her back to the chair, then bring her to his breast, where she suckles greedily, one blue fist tangling in his long hair, as black as hers.  
    He should have stuck to homosexual encounters - with women in female form, or men in the male form that could not concieve - or to sleeping with promiscuous women who expected him to leave without looking back so he would never have to know what offspring he spawned; but denying himself an entire area of sexuality for centuries had grated on him and eventually he gave in. He doesn't know who the father is - just one of a string of faceless one-night-stands - and wouldn't have told him of her birth even if he did.  
    His daughter looks up at him with luminous indigo eyes and even as he curses the foolishness that got him with child, he feels the fiercest need to protect her. No one can be trusted with knowledge of her existence. A child is a vulnerability; too deeply loved and too easily exploited. She is a danger to him, he is a danger to her, and no good will ever come of it.  
    He has such perfect understanding of the agony of losing a child, despite never having suffered such a tragedy, that it can only be a premonition.  
Loki returns his daughter to her crib and stands there swaying, gripping tight to the wood to keep from falling as he waits for the dizziness to abate. The fever has addled him so badly that he fails to recognize the sound of Sleipnir's hoof-beats until they stop.  
    "Please, no," Loki whispers, as footsteps approach the door, thunderous to his fevered senses.  
    He stumbles toward the door as it swings open, trying to gather the strength to fight. Odin is there, the firelight casting ominous shadows across his face.  
    Loki flings himself at Odin with an inarticulate cry, but his body is awkward with sickness and the female shape lacks the muscle of the male. Odin catches hold of him easily and keeps that hold, despite Loki's thrashing, until Loki collapses, sobbing, against his chest.  
    "No, no, no, no," Loki cries. "Don't take her away from me!"  
    "Peace, my son," Odin says. "Have I ever given you cause to believe I would do such a thing?"  
    He hadn't; Odin knew that he hadn't. Not this time. Not in this life. The other lives, the many that had ended in Ragnarok only to begin anew, are to Odin naught but knowledge; worn and faded like the dusty tomes of a bygone age. That first Odin, the merciless warlord who called Loki "brother" rather than "son," is so distant from memory, so utterly alien in disposition, that the present Odin finds his actions impossible to reconcile. Yet Odin sometimes wakes in the night still hearing Narfi's screams and Vali's howls, to feel the chill of Hela's cold gaze upon his soul. Hela, who, by virtue of surviving them all, is the only other who remembers every Ragnarok, and who keeps the souls of her four younger brothers close and safe in her hall, never to be reborn.  
    Loki looks up at Odin in confusion, not knowing why he had been so certain that Odin would harm his daughter. His past lives are relegated to a subconscious instinct - concealed from his awareness, yet so strongly informing his actions; lifetime after lifetime of hurt and madness, like hundreds of layers of half-shed skin binding Loki ever more tightly into the same twisted form of the Bringer of Ragnarok. Odin had thought that he had finally reached him, cut him free of his fetters, but this last fear was still so deeply rooted that it had sent Loki running the moment he had realized he was with child.  
    He had not had this reaction with Sleipnir; had entrusted him to Odin without the slightest hesitation once the colt was grown, but then Odin had valued Sleipnir and treated him with care in every incarnation.  
    "Come," Odin says. "Let us get you to bed. You are ill and in need of sleep."  
    Loki allows himself to be guided to the rickety bed; he lies down mutely and Odin tucks the covers around his shoulders. Odin sits on the bed beside his son runs his fingers through Loki's unkempt hair, working through the tangles as Loki watches him, still wary.  
    "Your mother and brother are worried about you," Odin tells him. "We have had Heimdall looking for you since you fled." The baby begins to cry again.  
    "She's always crying," Loki says, tiredly.  
    "Babies are wont to do so."  
    "Sleipnir didn't."  
    "Foals are better able to attend to their own needs. Infants must rely entirely on others." He stands and Loki tenses. "No one will take her from you, Loki," Odin reassures him, before going to the crib and lifting the baby out. This child is unknown to him - she has never been born before as far as he knows. "Hush, little one; what distresses you so? Ah, I see, you've wet yourself. Where do you keep the diapers, Loki?"  
    Loki points to a pile of cloth diapers in a basket by the table.  
    "What did you name her?" Odin asks, as he changes her.  
    "Nott," Loki answers, and Odin's hands still. It was the name of the first Loki's granddaughter, Narfi's daughter, so young when her father had been murdered. This is not the same child, but the memory had been there in Loki's subconscious when it came time to name her.  
    "It is a good name," Odin says, returning to work. "She is a beautiful child."  
    "She's not a monster." It is half statement, half question.  
    "Of course not," Odin assures him. "She is half-Jotunn; that does not make her a monster any more than it makes me one. Any more than being a full-blooded Jotunn makes you one. Jotnar are not monsters; they can be wild, sometimes savage, as the natural forces they embody can be, but they are not monsters."  
    They have talked about this many times before, after Thor brought Loki home, all rage and violence and words that cut to the marrow; his self-image warped by the false belief that he was born of monsters, destined to be the villain regardless of his intentions, and had no choice but to die or surrender himself to the evil in his blood.  
    Odin finishes changing Nott's diaper and returns to sit on the bed with her cradled in his arms.  
    "Sleep, Loki. Tomorrow the three of us will return to the palace where our family is waiting. There is no need for you to do this alone."


End file.
